


Scooby Road - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

by luminosity



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-12
Updated: 2005-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:39:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminosity/pseuds/luminosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A concept album.</p><p>ETA: at this late date, youtube has blocked Scooby Road. If you would like a high-quality download of this vid, please email me. Thank you. (March 16, 2013)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scooby Road - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 

A Collection of My Posts About Scooby Road, August 25, 2005 - January 18, 2006 (All of which are on Livejournal and have been summarized, copied, and pasted into this document)

[ **A sort of Vividcon Con Report, sort of - part 1 (Scooby Road)** ](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/292530.html#comments)

This is not to say that all of Vividcon is a swirly, multi-colored blur to me. It's more to say that all of Vividcon is a *well-defined* multi-colored blur to me. sisabet and I started our own con on the Wednesday before the con-con, when she picked me up at the airport in Louisville. The night before we drove up to Chicago, I insisted that we watch the first two eps of Dr Who (and she fell for my evil plan). We also watched Scooby Road at her house, and then we watched it again. I couldn't bear to tell her that if I saw it one more time I'd scream, but after a while I realized that it was a totally different experience to watch it with someone else as opposed to obsessing about it all by myself.

Also, my visit with sisabet was just wonderful and relaxing. We connect on so many levels, and it was fantastic to have that much uninterrupted time to visit and joke and discuss, well, everything with her on our trip up to (and back from) the con. Everyone should have that kind of experience. I tried very hard not to whine about obsess about concern myself with Scooby Road, and did okay for the most part--at least till we got to Chicago.

I wasn't really concerned, relatively speaking, about the vids themselves; I was consumed with anxiety about the DVDs not working at all or stopping in the middle of a vid, especially since one of them froze at the crescendo of the entire album on the Philips DVD player at my house. And you should have seen that! I actually had a slight case of hysteria, and Liza had to calm me down. She did that by playing them in every other DVD player in my house, and they were all fine, but once bitten and all that. (Actually, I am still dealing with a sort of post-traumatic stress thing, even today. I had a nightmare about Scooby Road last night.)

Speaking of hysteria. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm the most self-absorbed unaware person I know. I'm very intuitive about other people--their feelings and sensitivities and moods--and I'm totally clueless when it comes to my own self. I was so anxious about Scooby Road that I started to manifest all sorts of little physical ailments that turned into medium-sized, vid-show-shaped dread. I got charley horses in both legs. I hadn't had that sort of horrible muscle cramp since I ran track in high school! I felt nauseous. Vague headache. Flushed. For three days. I can look back on it now and know that it was totally related to my apprehension and lack of trust for the technology itself. I was convinced that the DVD was going to die in the middle of my show--and that couldn't happen. The night before the show, astolat went with me into the vid room and checked out the DVDs, and one of them froze up. This didn't help my feelings. We ran another one, and it was fine, but I still didn't trust it. I couldn't sleep on Thursday night, so yay Ambien. On Friday morning absolutedestiny offered to run a mirror file on his DVD player, and he found errors on two of my DVDs. So, yeah. Hysteria. I pulled those DVDs out of the stack and threw them away (I still don't understand what happened, or how it happened, since I burned them all the same). Right after that, a couple of people (you know who you are, God love you) offered me tranquilizers. I didn't take either person up on it, but I wanted to. I figured that I'd be out of it enough with just the show.

My show was at 2 on Friday. renenet did the Vividcon schedule, and I'm forever grateful to her for putting me so early in the con. I had blithely told her that I didn't care where I was on the schedule, but that was because I was an idiot. If I had had to deal with that free-range anxiety for one more minute, I probably would have gone catatonic. Also, I want to apologize for how irritating my incessant anxiety must have been.

I have to reassert this--I don't worry about vids per se. Once I make them, they're out there and that's it. I did the best I could, and damn the torpedoes and all that stuff. So I was wholly unprepared for how I felt about Scooby Road, and I may be lying to myself, but I still believe that 98% of my anxiety was directly related to my tech issues--and believe me! I have a history of tech issues! This project has been plagued by two hard drive failures, two OS failures, and loss (and subsequent miraculous recovery) of finished videos. There were a couple of other tech problems in the past, but I can't remember them now, and anyway, I promised myself that I'd not bitch about my computer anymore on LJ. So.

I actually remember very little about the show itself. I know I went up there at the beginning and thanked the con for letting me show Scooby Road, and I reminded the audience that the showcase was like a TV show, and there were no real breaks to speak of. I heard people singing along with Maxwell Silver Hammer. I remember closing my eyes and just leaning back against elynross during the final medley, and being unable to breathe because I was so apprehensive about the DVD dying in the middle of Carry That Weight. Long story short, the DVD played just fine, and all of that worry was groundless, and I need to remember this in the future.

There are about four seconds between the final shot of the project and the credits. Those four seconds. This is what I remember most clearly about the entire show. Those four seconds were an eternity of silence. I actually turned to apologize to Naomi for screwing it all up, and I saw her tear-streaked face, and she was smiling! I turned to Ellen, and she was crying, too. Then I turned my head in slow motion to the screen and saw my credits come up. I couldn't hear "Her Majesty." I don't know if it was applause (probably) or just me freaking out. The next thing I remember, I was walking *back* from the front of the room, and Killa, who was seated against the back wall, was standing up to hug me. Then I was out in the lobby. I think I levitated or teleported or something because *truly* I have NO MEMORY of this. I remember wanting to cry and being unable to. I remember mentally kicking myself because I had NO PLAN about what I would do or say if the showcase was successful. I had only armed myself in case it wasn't.

Sidebar: I've only experienced that sort of emotional overload one other time in my life--to the point where I can't really remember from one moment to the next, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. So. New thing. But *freaky.* Maybe it'll all come back to me later.

... let me mention that here--I had the most fantastic vid beta ever, elynross. She kept me on track and in line and was a critical, honest, creative sounding board. Also, she was very patient with me, and didn't scream every time I sent her yet another version of something. killabeez and sisabet were always available for comment, and there were several other vidders who saw pieces-parts of the project and offered criticism and encouragement, including laurashapiro, f1renze, tzikeh, lapillus, renenet and just_eunice. Every one of them offered constructive criticism that I could use, and I felt that they were all a big part of its success.

In my head, Abbey Road is still an LP. It has two sides. I am incapable of letting that go. The first side ends with I Want You, and the second side begins with Here Comes the Sun. The project reflects that, I think, because, while the first side has six vids on it, they're relatively discrete looks at different bits. There's set up. Come Together is my meta vid. Something is my "look how perverse they can be" vid. Maxwell Silver Hammer makes light of horrible events re Faith. Oh Darling shows how sincere and monstrous Spike is. Octopus's Garden is about the magic and silliness. I Want You is all about Buffy. However, the "other side" is of a piece. I tried hard to control the mood of the viewer starting with Here Comes the Sun. The entire last half was designed to build on I Want You to the end of the album and of the show. I think it worked out. Yes, I didn't want it to suck. I love Buffy--both the show and the character--and I wanted that to shine through the entire project. She's the chosen one and all, and we *win*. Scooby Road started out as a lark and ended up being my most sustained creative effort ever. Probably in my entire life. I read earlier where someone said that it took four years. No, it didn't take that long. (I made my first version of Come Together in 2002 and Something and The End in 2003. These three were all first versions and were redone and remastered in 2004. I didn't decide to actually do the album itself until last year's Vividcon, after my conversation with cesperenza, when we discussed that I had done so many vids that I now had an "oeuvre," and why not do an album?) With the exception of five other vids, I did the rest of the album from October 2004 thru August 2005. (I vidded more in the past year than I did in the two previous years.) There was a point in the project, in March of this year, where I made five vids in 19 days. I was in what I fondly refer to as "vid farr," but it was what a sustained heroin high must be like. And I'm addicted to it--that creative flow that feeds on itself and then reproduces itself. The only thing that stopped me after 19 days was physical exhaustion. I wanted to be in that flow all the time. I still want that.

~~~**~~~

[The Scooby Road Closure Post - Part Un](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/325346.html#comments)  
  
---  
| 

Even though [](http://sisabet.livejournal.com/profile)[**sisabet**](http://sisabet.livejournal.com/) assures me that she has something to say about it... :) Once again, I know what I wanted to do with Scooby Road, but that has little to do with how it was received.  
  
A little personal history.[](http://suzecarol.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://suzecarol.livejournal.com/) **suzecarol** was over visiting a couple of years ago (December 2002, I think), and I was in my usual froth of vidding, but I was looking for something beyond what I was doing at the time. We went through my CDs and I picked up Abbey Road and said that there could be something in there because I really liked the Beatles and felt that I could apply a Beatles tune to Buffy. My favorite song on the album was Come Together, so I started with that. When I finished that one, I perversely realized the Something could be a really bizarre song for Spike and Dru, so I made that one. And then, I realized that my favorite song was really the drum solo going out of Carry That Weight and into The End, so I started clipping for that.  
  
 _Memory: After about two weeks of frenzied vidding, with nothing being truly finished, Suze said, "Why don't you just [inhale cigarette, exhale smoke] vid the entire thing?"_  
  
I laughed. I thought she was kidding. So BLAME HER FIRST.   
  
What was I thinking? I felt that Come Together, being a sort of surrealistic hangover from Sgt Pepper and the White Album would really work well with Restless, so the first incarnation of the vid used footage only from that ep. And it was ... okay. I sent it to [](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/)**lapillus** for critique and she sent me back a kind yet _scathing_ critique, something that I wasn't prepared to get. Narrative problems, tech issues, timing.. you name it, and I screwed it up. It was as if I had gotten lazy. And I had. I had become self-indulgent and sloppy. She didn't *say* that, but I inferred that between the lines. So I took CT back into Premiere and started messing with it.  
  
I have considered [](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/profile)[**lapillus**](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/) and [](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/profile)[**killabeez**](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/) my mentors in vidding from the very start. They're the two people who encouraged me the most, who held my hand the longest, who taught me basic techniques and technical issues. [](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/)**lapillus** actually helped me over the phone when I was putting my capture card into the computer, and she taught me how to not be scared to death of Premiere. "See that arrow? make it say 'one second'"... :)  
  
Then my computer died. In retrospect, from a creative standpoint, this may have been the best thing that could have happened to me. I had to pull away from all vidding, for a few weeks.  
  
I made Something, just to be silly. At this point, I still wasn't taking Suze's idea to vid the entire album seriously, and I continued vidding Buffy and HL and started vidding Angel. I made The End because I loved the song, and I wanted to see if it were possible to actually show all of BTVS in 2:14. I let the idea go pretty much, but I wasn't telling Suze that.   
  
Then at Vividcon 2004, I was chatting with [](http://cesperenza.livejournal.com/profile)[**cesperenza**](http://cesperenza.livejournal.com/) , and she mentioned that she and [](http://astolat.livejournal.com/profile)[**astolat**](http://astolat.livejournal.com/) had been talking about someone doing the next step in vidding, a concept album. That we had spent nearly 30 years making "singles," and wouldn't it be cool if someone did an album? Someone like... LUM! I told her that Suze had suggested that I vid all of Abbey Road, and suddenly, it was official, and I was going to do it. I had no idea what I had agreed to do. NO IDEA.  
  
 _Memory: Ces: You know, you could do something like.. Sgt. Pepper! The Sgt. Pepper of vids. Me: Well, what about Abbey Road?_  
  
Actually getting started-- I already had Come Together, Something and The End. All done with crappy VHS source. (stops for a moment to consider the amount of clip-capturing those three vids entailed) I knew that I had to redo them, and I had all of BTVS on DVD by that time. (yes, Santa was good to me) I remastered The End first, and started on Carry That Weight. Unfortunately, when my computer died the next time, I was in the middle of that project, and it wasn't saved to disk,but I had a high-quality wmv file, and [](http://absolutedestiny.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://absolutedestiny.livejournal.com/)**absolutedestiny** came to my rescue (more than once) with a converted file that I could work with.  
  
 _Memory: Ian: You know, if the rest of your Scooby Road is like Carry That Weight, it'll be pretty good._  
  
I pulled up [](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://lapillus.livejournal.com/)**lapillus** 's critique of Come Together and agreed with every point she made and promised myself that I'd never be that sloppy again. I didn't want to disappoint her. Also, the vid had sat dormant for a year and a half, so I had other, more complex ideas about it. I thought that it would make a great vid about how the spirit of the First Slayer infused Buffy. And I wanted to say a little something meta about the entire project, which was why I put in clips of the First Slayer's group of "watchers" with subtitles: "we know who you are" and "we know why you're here." Those clips were going to be directed at my audience. I had also learned morphing with (my Angel vid) Here, and I knew that if I could use that effect anywhere, it would be in this vid.  
  
I had to pause and consider just what I wanted to do, *really* with the entire album. I decided that I wanted an overview of the show, sure, but I wanted to show how much I *loved* the show, how much I loved Buffy herself, how her friends revolve around her, really. And that it was necessary to have a single goal for a "concept" album.  
  
Also, I had started thinking about structure. After having remastered The End, and adding Carry That Weight, I knew that The End was the coda or the epilogue, not the real *end* of what I wanted to do. Carry That Weight was the end. I framed Buffy in chains from Get It Done in Come Together and then breaking out of them in Carry That Weight, along with several other images. (Actually, I did this deliberately throughout the entire project because I wanted to viewer--whether consciously or unconsciously, I didn't care--to harken back to where those images were the first time.)  
  
I also decided that, as much as I love special effects, I couldn't load this down with them. One, for continuity's sake. I hoped that the themes of each vid would somehow relate one to the other, and if I had bells and whistles on one, I'd have to have bells and whistles on the rest. That's not to say that Scooby Road isn't chock-full of manipulated clips. Boy howdy is it ever! And two, time was of the essence, and special effects take time.  
  
I didn't write down a list of what I wanted each song to be. Instead, I fretted about it endlessly to my beta, [](http://elynross.livejournal.com/profile)[**elynross**](http://elynross.livejournal.com/). Going in, I knew that Come Together would be the Scoobies and the First Slayer, Money would be Buffy and Angel, Here Comes the Sun would be an unironic look at the Scoobies, and the medley would be, in order, Warren, the Buffybot and Dawn. After that, it was all up for grabs.  
  
  
Next up, vid by vid.  
  
~~~**~~~

[The Scooby Road Closure Post - Part Deux](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/325565.html#comments)

|   
---|---  
| 

If I forget anything, I know I can count on myriad ~~conscripted victims~~ friends to remind me! It's a thing with me, once I start something, that need to finish it. That alone is what kept me going during a couple of rough periods. I couldn't start this project and then give it up in the middle.  
  
I decided early on that I wasn't going to twist and contort any of the songs into what I *wanted* them to be (No, I couldn't fit Angel into the Willow/Tara vid, no matter how much I wanted to). The subject matter had to present itself, and I had to feel that I could really get into the idea. That happened every time, although some were easier to get into than others. That's not to say that I didn't have other ideas before I made a vid about a certain subject. Secondarily, every vid had to apply to Buffy in some way (which I defined as liberally as necessary). I worked that out pretty well, even if some of the connections are tenuous to the casual viewer.  
  
 **Come Together**. At first, this was my frothy vid. I made it before I decided to do the entire album, and it underwent the most changes thematically once I did decide. Only Restless is as surreal as Come Together, and I thought that they would work together pretty well. When I recut it, I was so happy that Buffy visited that desert and the First Slayer again. I didn't care for the "neat" makeup on the later (first slayer) actress, so I worked around her. As I said earlier, CT was my meta statement--well, at least one of them. :)  
  
So, what is Come Together really about? Well, it was about joining each other, becoming more powerful together than apart. That lent itself immediately to the spell scene in Restless, and I put that down first. Also, I wanted the First Slayer to "speak" so I made it her POV. Then, okay, it's her POV, but it's her spirit that has imbued Buffy with such power, so the POV could shift "legally" from the First Slayer to Buffy. Because Buffy and the other Scoobies were sharing dreamtime, I could shift POV back and forth till it became irrelevant. And YAY! Okay, true, I counted on the viewer to know about Restless, and I wanted to utilize that(unconscious?) knowledge that the viewer had about the dreams shifting from person to person--that the viewer would flow with the shifting POV.  
  
Restless is a great episode to introduce characters. Every dream is infused with a bit of the characters' waking lives. Giles is a watcher, keeping time. Xander may the heart, but he's traveling through the Heart of Darkness. Willow's still a schoolgirl, working out her feelings for Tara, feeling alienated. Buffy's still the unsure warrior, but she has weapons!  
  
And Buffy had to know, had to come to intimately understand how her power came to be, and that her feelings of being "imprisoned" by her calling weren't false. They were true, they were right, but now that she knows that, she has to move on and deal.  
  
But I had the rest of the album to work that out.  
  
 **Something.** I decided to keep Something about Dru and Spike. It was too perverse not to. And it could be funny, in a way. When I remastered this vid, I had to adjust it because it was too much of a good thing. I had to completely redo the bridge because I had a nearly 45-second piece of "accidental" video. The Boxer Rebellion clip from when Dru walks in to Spike standing over the Slayer's body till the fadeout of Spike and Dru falling to the floor in a mad, passionate, overwrought (hilarious) embrace -- after all this *is* Spike telling the story, right?-- was perfectly timed to the bridge without any adjustment from me. Yeah, it was pretty, but if I let it just *go on*, it would ultimately break up the visual rhythm of the rest of the song. So I broke it up visually. I hated to do it, but the needs of the many, and all of that. As it is, Something has the longest clip in the project, the final image of Spike vamping out and biting the girl at the Bronze.  
  
I love Dru. She's so perfectly insane and yet... so sane. And she's funny in a terrifying way. I can see Spike's attraction to her, his obsession with her, his dark goddess. His nutcase. One of my favorite clips ever in a vid I made is in this one--where Dru is waving her fingers over Spike's head to George's beautiful guitar solo, right after she seductively rubs a rose across her cheek. Hey y'all! It's Dru. And Spike loves her.  
  
How did it apply to Buffy? That was the last time Spike ever saw Dru in the flesh. His heart was turning to Buffy. The final clips come from Crush. How appropriate.  
  
 **Maxwell Silver Hammer.** I had always intended to make a funny-not-haha vid here. After all, the song is a bouncy tune about a serial killer. I wanted to make it using Tabula Rasa, simply because of the "Joan" joke. I fretted about this vid for a long time, and I put off making it till I had made 12 of the 16 vids. I chose and then discarded about five scenarios for it before I settled on Faith. Now, I can't imagine having even considered anything else.  
  
So, Faith was Maxwell, and Buffy was Joan, and the other characters fell into place. But I had to define what the Silver Hammer was. I concluded that it was that weird vibe--destructive and self-destructive--that she exuded. She caused chaos and damage everywhere she went. At first, I had some clips from S4 in there, but I tightened it up to be only Faith's S3 arc.  
I also wanted to noodge my audience a little bit, and MSH is the perfect Beatles singalong song. Paul McCartney seemed to write and sing nursery rhymes a lot (most Beatles fans can choose who wrote what re Lennon/McCartney), and one almost can't help but sing along with him. His music is more classically melodic, carrying a more obvious history of swing music than John's. I talked to [](http://absolutedestiny.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://absolutedestiny.livejournal.com/)**absolutedestiny** about it, telling him that I wanted to make singalong subtitles, and I knew that I could do it in AE, but I couldn't figure out where to start. I had tried using Photoshop and actually putting the text there, but I wanted more--something to convey to the audience that it was fun! He whipped out those subtitles in about a day, *with* silver hammer, and then sent me the project file so I could see how it was done.  
  
And! the subtitles were over some really horrific scenes. Death and body parts burning off and Vampires!! But it was fun!  
  
I laid clips in a sort of syncopated rhythm here, and the syncopation repeats in Mean Mr Mustard and culminated it in Polythene Pam (Buffybot jumping around Spike).   
  
**Oh Darling!** I didn't know what to do with this song. My first consideration was making it about Xander and Anya, but I just couldn't get cynical enough. Then [](http://elynross.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://elynross.livejournal.com/)**elynross** once again pointed out the obvious--that this was about Spike and Buffy. At first, I went back and forth, back and forth. Should it be funny, or should it be sad? Should I play it straight and make a sympathetic Spike vid? Well. **_NO_**. In a way, this is as much a meta response to fandom as it is a look at how Spike viewed his relationship with Buffy. A relationship of sexualized violence and degradation. That he relished. And loved. Spike was more of a vampire here in S6 than at any other time that we ever see him. (JMGLO, YMMV - see vid? *points*)  
  
There's an underlying sense of, I don't know, *desperation* in the lyrics. A subtext of panic. When the panic finally manifests, the singer (Spike) does exactly the wrong thing. Every time. His intentions are good, but he's *EVIL*. It can't end well.   
  
**Octopus's Garden.** My first thought was that this could be a Xander vid. Then I wanted to make an Initiative vid. Then I wanted to make a Xander's POV hero-worship vid to Riley. None of that really applied to Buffy. When I considered Jonathan, at first I considered his entire arc, from Big Gulp-sipping to bleeding over the Hellmouth, but dammit! This is Ringo!  
Making an episode-related vid presented specific challenges. Come Together uses very limited episodic source--Restless, Primeval, Get It Done, Intervention. There is only one clip that isn't from the Superstar episode. *g* It was a retelling of Superstar, and I felt that, within the confines of the retelling, I could skip through POV changes in the vid the same way that the episode did.  
  
And how many Jonathan vids are there anyway? I've seen only one other.   
  
  
**I Want You.** First off, I had to cut the song. It's 7:11 of John wailing his love for Yoko and trying to convince us as well, and it devolves into a monotony of choruses. Don't get me wrong. I love it. But not even I, as self indulgent as I am, could sit through 7:11 vid of it. So, I talked to [](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/)**killabeez** about it, showed her what I had done, and she took it away from me and did it so much better. And about two minutes less than what I had pared it down to. I think it ended up being 3:16, which is long enough to say what you're gonna say.  
  
I never ever considered using this as a romantic song. That it was about the dark side of wanting Buffy was evident to me, both sexually and as the Slayer (and as both). And why! That was the most important thing. Why did The Master want her? Why did Spike or Angel? Because *she's so heavy*. She's so powerful. She's so _heroic_. To take down a Slayer, well... quite a feather in one's cap for any evil being--from The Master to The First and all of the various and sundry evil skulking between.  
  
I started echoing images here, mostly because I wanted a visual representation of a yearning for power and the power itself.   
  
Next up--Side Two  
  
~~~**~~~

[The Scooby Road Closure Post - Part Trois](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/325805.html)

|   
---|---  
| 

I'm sure I have more to say about the entire process, but I just need to get this out anyway, even if my thoughts aren't as organized as I'd like. I feel that these three posts are very short, considering that I spent 16 months fretting about it. :)  
  
I did think that maybe I should list the order in which I made the vids, and that sort of explains why I might not remember some things, or may think that some things are more important than others. The order in which I made the vids is thus: Come Together, Something, The End, Come Together remaster, You Never Give Me Your Money, The End remaster, Carry That Weight, The Medley, Oh Darling!, Something remaster, Golden Slumbers, Maxwell Silver Hammer, Here Comes the Sun, Octopus's Garden, I Want You, Because, Sun King. I made most of them in March and April of last year, but I never stopped vidding the project until August of last year. Whatever song I was vidding at the moment became my *favorite song EVER* on Abbey Road.  
  
 **Side Two.** Okay, Side two is where *my* heart is. This is the music of much of my life. I have personal connections to all of it, and I've been moved by it since I was a kid. I know this album better than any other, and the challenge was to convey the depth of my feelings about _the music_ through the video. And, considering that BTVS and the Jossverse are my best beloveds, it was a challenge to use the music to show how I felt about _the show_. And if I was really lucky, they'd combine into something entirely new. I knew that if I played my cards right, I could tell a relentless emotional narrative using Side Two-- which is my way of saying that I'll never hear Abbey Road again without thinking of Buffy, and most of all, I wanted *that* to happen to the viewers of Scooby Road.  
  
Side Two just doesn't stop. It breaks, though. Here Comes the Sun and Because stand apart but not alone. And Sun King gives you an aural rest before the medley starts. But really, Side Two is one long, gorgeous piece of pop music, and I wanted to cover the emotional gamut of Buffy with it.  
  
 **Here Comes the Sun.** A look at the Scoobies' love for one another. My first thought for this was Dawn (dawn! ha!), but I already knew that Dawn would star in Bathroom Window, and I didn't want to overdo. So, the music, at this point, dictated where I would begin with this one, but I had a lot of trouble with it. It may be the most famous song on this album, for one thing, and even though I had jokingly given myself permission to have one screw-up in the project, it couldn't be this one. (Actually, it couldn't be _any_ one, but I always gave myself that safety net. I may have been hanging on to the vidding trapeze by my fingernails, but I never fell.) It's totally without irony, for one thing, and I find it difficult to wade through metaphors without at least a little irony. In my talks with **[](http://elynross.livejournal.com/profile)[**elynross**](http://elynross.livejournal.com/)** , I worked out a way to channel that into literalism by the end of the song. The sun. Here comes the sun. The sun is the life-giving warmth of friendship and love for one's brother. The sun wakes Buffy from the horrors of her life as a Slayer (dreams), and the sun points her to her destiny. I tried to build to that by the end of the song, which is one of the reasons I showed the Scoobies in violent disagreement as well as in total sync. It's not all roses and cherries out there, not even with your best friends, who'll die for you. The last clip of the song *is* the sun coming up--revelation, epiphany, warmth and love, and it's when Buffy's decision to die for Dawn (dawn! ha!) becomes, well, _flesh_. I wanted the viewer to be moved by that image the same way I was moved when I saw it first.   
  
  
**Because.** This song used to bring my grandma to tears every time she heard it. She told me that it was so beautiful, but it still felt like it was the beginning of an argument, and when it ended, she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, I took that to heart. If ever a shoe were to drop on Buffy, it was Tara's discovery of Willow's memory spell. I was able to use bits of literalism, the circle on 'because the world is round,' the wind in Willow's hair on 'because the wind is high,' etc. And! the fact that Willow was Tara's entire world. I built and built and built on the romance, but the other shoe had to drop. With a deafening silence.   
  
  
**You Never Give Me Your Money.** Buffy and Angel. Oh yeah. This was the first vid I made after I had agreed to do the album for Vividcon. I love that it's three songs in one, really, and in the order of the album, I went from near-literalism in Because to total metaphor in Money. "Money" is all about love and giving of oneself completely and having it backfire on you over and over again. Buffy wants intimacy, and Angel withholds. Not because he doesn't want her but because he feels that he doesn't deserve her. In the second verse, he *does* give her his situation, and look what happens. Then the first bridge of what [](http://laurashapiro.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://laurashapiro.livejournal.com/)**laurashapiro** called "carefree murder"--Angelus wrecking havoc on everyone, but especially Buffy--segues into the second bridge, 'oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go,' of his soulless-yet-undying passion for her (cf. I Want You), which infuriates him. I used the building guitar notes to show the change that comes over Buffy--that she has had enough, she knows she has to kill him, and on each rising bit, I showed Angelus getting worse and worse until Spike knocks him out. By the time "one sweet dream came true today," I had hoped to have set the hook in the viewer. The viewer knows what's coming--it's inevitable, it's relentless and it's going to make them cry (just like Becoming 2 did to me). Yay!  
  
When I put that clip of Angel being reensouled in, I think I did a little dance--that's how much confidence I had in the song. I did put Buffy saying "close your eyes" under the audio at the end. It's very faint, as to be almost subliminal, but it's there. I cut about 15 seconds off the end and then segued it into Sun King.  
  
  
 **Sun King.** The last vid I made. The hardest, believe it or not. I always knew that it would be about Giles, but I had the grand notion that it would be all about his expertise as a Watcher and Spellcaster. Sun King is not as long as I thought it was, so I had to make drastic changes in my goals. Because I had to pare it down, I think it became stronger. Yes, he _is_ the Watcher, the Spellcaster, but above and beyond that, he's the guide for all of these *children*, especially Buffy and Willow. This is Willow's understanding of Giles after S6. He was the only person who had the tools to bring Evil!Willow down, and he was the only person who had the tools--and the faith--to start her healing. He is TEACHER. The most heartbreaking moment for me in the vid is 'everybody's laughing, everybody's happy' because *nobody* is, especially not Willow.  
  
[](http://just-eunice.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_eunice**](http://just-eunice.livejournal.com/) walked me through AE for this vid. I was going to make floating text of all of the nonsense words--which sounded like spells to me. The first drafts had the words floating around, and it was really cool, but the images were too busy to carry them. Giles putting Willow through the wall _alone_ is six separate clips. So, I took the floating text out.   
  
  
**Medley: Mean Mr Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.** Here's where the viewer gets to take a deep breath and laugh (because by the end, I don't want the viewer breathing. I want her crying). Of the three parts, I made Polythene Pam first, and then I worked backwards into Mean Mr Mustard. Because PP was the Buffybot, Warren had to be Mean Mr Mustard, but I didn't realize that at first. At first, it was going to be Spike. I think it worked better with Warren, especially when I was able to show Spike ordering a robot. Warren was MEAN, he didn't fit in anywhere, so he made his own world, where he was nerdking.  
  
I'm most happy with my timing in Polythene Pam. Once again, a few of the cuts were almost subliminal, e.g., the bot hitting the wall and then sliding to the floor, and the bot running into the wall and Willow pulling her away. Also, I had a lot of fun with jumpcuts and making the bot work out to the beat. One of the things I love about the bot is that she's always tossing her hair.  
  
The end of Polythene Pam is the warning shot over the bow. The chord that segues from PP to Bathroom Window is the beginning of the end. I couldn't kill the bot, not when I had that image of Dawn lying down next to her, loving and missing Buffy. I was able to introduce Dawn and hopefully convince the viewer that the only explanation for Dawn is that she came in through the bathroom window (magic). The vid is Buffy's POV, and she's singing about S5, and how her love for Dawn defined her life and her death. I ended the song once again with the sun rising, but this time it was personal--Buffy's epiphany about Death being her Gift, her love for Dawn, and she was able to kiss Dawn goodbye as the sun rose. And make people cry!   
  
**Golden Slumbers.** What else could possibly work here other than Buffy's heartbreaking resurrection and desire for things to be the way they were and could never be again? I counted on the viewer knowing that when Buffy hugs her friends on 'smiles await you when you rise,' it wasn't a good thing. In my head, Spike is talking to her through the entire song, offering her comfort (however destructive that comfort turned out to be) and Buffy's thinking and remembering her high school friendships and how deadly they were now. This should be a comforting song, a lullaby, but I wanted to use it ironically, so I used the saddest moments of Buffy's life, when she is ripped out of heaven ("by my friends!"), when she wants to burn up and die, and when she scrambles out of her grave. Also, to add to the sadness, the music dictated that I put show her friends' reactions at her moment of confession and epiphany.  
  
I didn't do too much technically with Golden Slumbers. It's probably the most direct vid in the set. But I didn't think I needed to!  
  
  
 **Carry That Weight.** This is my own favorite vid on the entire album. It encompasses Buffy from A-Z, showing her predicament, her curse (weight) of being the Slayer and her victory and acceptance of it. The entire first verse is the weight and her struggles with her calling and its heartbreaks. Because I had already done Money, the reprise of same was a given--that one of her greatest weights was Angel, and when she takes the amulet from him, she puts down that weight and willingly taking on the mantle of her calling as the Slayer. The ending verse is Buffy picking up the weight and carrying it, from The Harvest to End of Days. She fights the good fight, she breaks the chains that the first watchers put on the First Slayer. My favorite clip in the entire project is here, too--where Buffy drops from the manhole, stakes the ubervamp with the scythe _**and turns around** , _fully integrated into Woman and Slayer. Even now, when I watch it myself, I get a little teary.  
  
In my own head, that moment is the end of the album.   
  
  
**The End.** Funny, how this started out as a challenge to just show BTVS from beginning to end in two minutes. I had made this vid in early 2004, and all I wanted to do was get it right visually. What it ended up being was a recap of the entire project and of the show itself. And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make--for Spike, for the Scoobies and for Buffy herself.  
  
 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
